Thursday, April 1, 2010

Yes!!! Fringe is back, so of course, This Week in Fringe is back as well. Spoilers below.

Episode 15 - "Peter"

After a two month break, it's great to see Fringe back on TV again, because despite Lost being good this season, I'm already starting to hate FlashForward again, so at least I still have Fringe around to be my good American science fiction show, when it's not going off topic... which is why this week's episode was so great, it stayed on topic!

What do I mean? I mean that for the first time... maybe ever, the show not only answered the cliffhanger from the last episode (when Olivia sees a shimmer around Peter, finally concretely revealing that he is indeed the Peter from the alternate universe), but it didn't have some other sort of semi-related "case/creature of the week". This episode was all about exactly what happened with Peter and Walter and how the alternate Peter came to be. And it was perfect.

95% of the episode takes place in the past, late eighties/early nineties, no specific date is given, but they point out that the first George Bush is President... though they also show that Back to the Future is in theaters (and starring Eric Stoltz, who in real life was in the role, and then recast) and that actually released in 1985, so it's a bit confusing. Regardless, the show even opens with a fantastic eighties version of the Fringe opening and theme, and all the flashback scenes are shot with that soap-opera'y glow effect. Also fascinating is the make-up job done on John Noble, because it really did make Walter seem twenty years younger. I was only upset to not see a young William Bell (Leonard Nimoy), because less face it, when has Nimoy not looked old? A missed chance.

I really loved seeing young, sane Walter, it was like watching a completely different man on screen, yet he was still oddly familiar. The tragic tale of him and his wife (who you finally get to see) losing their son is quite touching, and their struggle to get him back is even more so. Sure, a bulk of the episode is just visual representation of things we already knew or have been told, so there weren't too many revelations, but just seeing it was such a shift in tone and design for the show, and it was pretty fantastic. It's just kind of annoying to know that the rest of the season will probably go back to being same old Fringe, but just this once, it got to be something special.

Overall Score: 9.5/10

I don't think I need to explain myself this time around, as that review really says it all. After being frequently disappointed by the rest of Fringe's second season, and a two month gap, "Peter" was the episode that every Fringe follower wanted to see, and then some. If you haven't watch the show yet, it's still not too late, skip through all the fluff episodes, watch the main story ones, and then watch this in amazement. More of this please, thanks Fringe.